Lee was playing for the wrong team. If a thief were to break into your home or hack into your computer, would you admire his ingenuity in doing it?
Lee was playing for Virginia. People were citizens of their states. It's more akin to calling the Brits "traitors" for leaving the EU.
Not so. The South had the much better philosophical and legal position in the CW. Just not the power. 150 years of government school propaganda has erased that truth, but scholars know it.
I am not an expert on the Civil War.
My teachers taught me to abhor slavery, and I do.
As I have aged, I have found that there are many intricacies and subtleties that I was not taught in school.
What once seemed so clear to me can, at times, appear cloudy.
Nothing stirs up a good fight on Free Republic like a thread about The Civil War. I have seen voluminous arguments over a footnote in a book.
I am an old Soldier. I don’t study the Civil War as a historian or humanitarian.
I study it to learn military lessons.
That means that I must look at both sides in the fight to see what they militarily did right and wrong.
Lee’s first year in command of The Army Of Northern Virginia was very successful.
I still abhor slavery.